27-APR
Sloane rarely came home to a dark house, one of the small luxuries of being the last one home, but tonight the house looked spiritless, as if it belonged to a family on vacation, a few lights left glowing in strategic rooms to ward off burglars.
“Abigail!” she yelled.
“Up here,” a faint voice called back. Sloane could hear the sound of a television. She stared up through the ceiling, as if she could see Abigail through it. Her mom brain filled with all the ugly things that a young girl might start to get into if left to her own devices. Forget baby-proofing, Sloane would like to pre-teen-girl-proof her home. She’d take out the razors, the scissors, anything sharp, the toilet bowls and trash cans, the girl’s magazines and instant messenger apps and cell phones and pills and liquor bottles and cameras.
Sloane stripped off her blazer and kicked her shoes underneath the lip of a cabinet.
“The school district superintendent called me.” At the sound of a voice, she spun around to the darkened living room, her heart thumping like a trapped rabbit’s.
“You scared me,” she told Derek. The silhouette of her husband blackened the couch. The streetlights that filtered through the shutters lit the outer edge of a beer bottle sea-glass green. “He said he was disappointed to receive our complaint.”
“I never said ‘we’,” said Sloane, resting her hip against the granite counter.
“You know.” Derek raised the beer to his mouth. He always sounded more Southern when he’d had a beer or two. “He wished that we didn’t threaten litigation and he hoped we would change our minds. Change our minds. Ours.”
“You didn’t see the text messages that Abigail was receiving.”
“Yes, I did.” Derek pointed the bottle’s neck at her.
“There were more.”
He laughed and pushed himself up off the sofa to pace the rug. “And you hid them? Gee, Sloane, that’s so unlike you.”
She would not take the bait. “I wanted to keep your hands clean,” she said. “I didn’t want to involve you. So … I made an executive decision.”
“This is my job, Sloane.” He thumped his chest.
“I understand that.”
“Do you?” He twisted on his heel to face her. “Because I think that you think just because you make more money than I do, that makes you more important to this family. The executive decision-maker, right?”
“I don’t think that.”
“You may make more money, but we both work equally hard. We both have full-time jobs. You could work other places, Sloane.” He aimed his finger at her, tipped his chin. “You don’t want to, but you could. There aren’t a lot of other school districts in this town.”
“They’re not going to fire you and even if they did—”
“Even if they did, what? What, it wouldn’t matter?” He raked his hands over his face. He’d put together the swing set in the backyard with those hands.
“Of course it would matter. I’m sorry. Like I said, I wanted to keep you out of it. The problem is not in the saying of the thing, Derek, it’s that the thing is happening in the first place.” Why did nobody seem to understand this?
“Right, well, I hope that Ardie and Grace know what they’ve gotten into with you.” And there it was. Her worst fear laid bare by her favorite person. She was a terrible ambassador for the cause. She was a liability. She had told herself that she might be an imperfect envoy for their message, but that she was the only one available and so she had to be better than nothing. But now there was a lawsuit, a counter lawsuit and, well, maybe even more. Maybe even real, permanent, life-altering ramifications for her or one of her friends. And she didn’t know how or where any of this would end. Only that it had just begun with Ames dying. And the women were left to deal with it, whatever it was. In the end, what if she was left with nothing? Nothing could be worse for her than nothing.